Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Stop feeding the monster: Bird lessons in life

This week a handyman finished repairing holes in the siding
of our house. A woodpecker hammered away until there were three holes large
enough for chickadees to nest in. This is not a joke. They actually did. If you
timed it right you could see a parent returning with little green worms and if
you listened closely you could hear the ecstatic cries of the babies when
dinner arrived. It was an odd thing to see a chickadee perched on the hole’s
edge, its head poking out the side of our house. Whether advisable or not, we
waited until they moved out before the work was done.

We are a little obsessed with bird-watching around here and
learn all kinds of life lessons from them. Not that I take to the woods with
binoculars. No. I’m too fat and lazy for that. We have extremely popular
feeders on our deck so all I need to do is sit at my desk sipping coffee and twist
my neck to watch. I try not to get too distracted by the constant commotion
outside my window, but the other day I was disgusted by something I’d never
seen before – a tiny song sparrow feeding a baby bird about four times her
size. The baby was fluttering its wings as young ones do while the exhausted
parent flew back and forth to the feeder, grabbing seeds and popping them in the
demanding open mouth. Back and forth, over and over. I was witnessing the
perpetrator of a malicious crime. Slavery. A murderer of sorts. An imposter.
Pig. And here was a mother who didn’t even know this was not her own child.

This was a purple finch (little larger species than song sparrows) nest we found on our porch some time ago, but you can see the cowbird egg which is larger and a mottled brown. I removed it returned the nest to the rightful owners.

Male Cowbird

The baby was a young cow bird whose mother had spied the
innocent song sparrow’s nest a month or more ago and stealthily laid her own
fat egg among the tiny sparrow eggs. The cow bird can’t be bothered to hatch
her own eggs and instead sneaks into another bird home and leaves a fake. And
it isn’t like the hatchling joins the rest of the brood thankful to be fed, thankful
to be anywhere at all – it always hatches first – ugly, (okay all baby birds
are ugly, but I’m annoyed here) blind and featherless, and then it commits
fratricide by pushing the other eggs out of the nest to destroy all
competition. You may not approve of this, but my husband set the foster mother
free by dispatching the imposter.

It’s one thing to hear David Attenborough talk about certain
disturbing aspects of bird life, but altogether a different thing to witness it
firsthand.

I love metaphor and this was so flagrant I had to reflect on
it. I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself far gone down a road you had no
idea would end up severely depleting or even destroying your assets? Or health?
Or family? I once nurtured a multi-level marketing company thinking it could
make me, if not rich, then able to purchase “extras” like Calphalon cookware,
percale sheets and massage therapy. I loved the product and invested a lot of
money trying to make sales only to learn that as the months passed with little
to show for my effort, it became clear I was the worst salesperson on earth. This
was not becoming the nest egg I’d hoped for because I couldn’t bring myself to
tell you how much good this skincare line could be for your flaky, pock-marked
face. But I continued feeding time and money into the maw of the business hoping
it would get better. Gradually, I fell into discouragement and guilt, but for
several years I was afraid to quit. How could I admit such failure to my
husband who had supported this risk? How could I make up the lost dollars?
Finally, I told him how much I hated sales and how sorry I was for the wasted
money and how afraid I was to stop feeding this monster in my life because I’m
not a quitter, but what could I do? Then came one of the most wonderful proofs
of grace in my life. He said – “Stop doing this. Let it go and don’t worry
about it. It’s a valuable thing to try something out to see if it will work and
to find out it doesn’t. You didn’t know this wouldn’t be your thing. So let it
go.” I quit immediately and I’ve never forgotten the love he demonstrated in
walking through that with me.

Epilogue: we’ve seen another batch of song sparrow babies
that are genetic offspring. Definitely. I even imagine I’m hearing happier
songs.

2 comments:

Great story! I heard a sermon 20 years go titled "Don't Feed the Cuckoo," which used similar behavior by the cuckoo bird as an object lesson in how we ought not to "feed" our sin nature the way the sparrow (completely unknowing, unlike us) was feeding that foster child. I didn't know that the cowbird does this, too. We don't have cuckoos or cowbirds in my part of the world. :-)

I love this. In a weird way. Because I felt the anger at the cow bird.I was hoping when you mentioned the woodpecker, you'd have a story about how you stopped them from burrowing into your walls. We care-take a barn that is severely under attack. There's little fluffs of pink insulation all over the property. From a distance, I think a bird has lost all her under-feathers, and then I realize it's just floating insulation. The holes are being filled with acorns. We're at a loss. Yay for the new babies.(I haven't been on this blog in so long...ah life....but I love it every time I visit.)

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For many years we lived in Toad Hall, an old American Gothic Foursquare house named for the mansion in Wind in the Willows although ours wasn’t really a mansion, the kids just thought it was. Now we live in a different home – one more suited to aging with dignity – yes, well, we can hope – The House Between. “Between” because we are living that stage of life between now and what is to come. Sound a little macabre? It’s not. We needed move to a space with main floor accessibility for older people who may not always be able to climb stairs to sleep and eliminate. We love this home in a quiet neighborhood with offices overooking the wooded ravine behind where we feed birds and watch coyotes play leap frog. We love knowing, too, that this is not our final place – there is more healing and goodness in the next life. I’ve kept the name of my blog toadsdrinkcoffee because I don’t know how to migrate to a new one. The name is now even more obscure, but it had to do with living in Toad Hall and my addiction to coffee. However, I did migrate my old publication – Notes From Toad Hall– to the new one Letters from the House Between.